PhD Student Publishes Articles on Surgical History

News

Congratulations go out to PhD student Cynthia Tang, who was the Department's first Research Fellow at the Canadian Science and Technology Museums in the summer of 2016: read her post on the CSTMC blog about the history of surgical gloves here.

Recently Cynthia, in collaboration with her supervisor, Prof. Thomas Schlich, has published two articles. "Surgical Innovation and the Multiple Meanings of Randomized Clinical Trials: the First RCT on Minimally Invasive Cholecystectomy (1980-2000)" (Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences) uses the first randomized controlled trial evaluating laparoscopic cholecystectomy (removal of gall bladder) to investigate the introduction of minimally invasive surgery in the 1990s. Click here to view the abstract.

In addition, Cynthia and Thomas's article on "Patient Choice and the History of Minimally Invasive Surgery" has just appeared in the October 2016 issue of The Lancet. Based on recollections of Canadian pioneers of laparoscopic cholecystectomy, this article reveals how patients sought out the new operation, and urged surgeons to extend the minimally invasive intervention to children and pregnant women.